![]() ![]() Then I immediately got up and walked over to Ult, had 2 minutes to warm up, and played (and lost) to Cosmos. By game 3 I was back in the right headspace and I won. I lost game 1 to BIGkiD, and very nearly lost game 2. I knew I should have taken a longer break, but some twisted part of my mind told me it was a good idea to try and play and force myself to recover from the tilted state of mind. I was really tilted after the loss, and had to play another set immediately. I was letting too many external factors get in my head, such as people from his region talking smack (playfully, not maliciously), and ultimately slipped up majorly in game 3. Of course, I did end up losing the set to FatGoku. I’d informed the streamrunners about my situation but I guess it was too late to bump me any further up the queue, so we had to wait it out. It was around 3:30pm when we played, and my Ultimate round 2 pool was at 4pm, so I was pretty annoyed. Another half hour, and we still haven’t played. Then an hour goes by, and I’m waiting for my stream match against FatGoku. ![]() ![]() Then I had to transition to Melee (which was round 2 pools at this point – round 1 was the day before) and I started off hot, winning my first set against R2DLiu with a 4 stock. I made an upset and won my pool, and was feeling good. I came to the venue early to warm up Melee, then transitioned to warm up Ultimate until my Ultimate pool started. Before you know it, months and months go by, tournaments come and go, and you have to live with the decisions you’ve made in the past. If there’s anything I’ve learned about smash, it’s that the long-term investments are basically always worth it. ![]() I was in n3z’s chat at some point talking about it and Kalindi pointed out that if I’m sick at both games in a year, nobody will care about a few bumps along the road right now. If I’m serious about competing in both Melee and Ultimate at a high level, I need to learn what does and doesn’t work for switching games and managing my time at tournaments. But I figured that the experience actually competing in both games simultaneously would be worth it, even with reduced preparation for Melee. I’ve known this was a risk, and debated playing secondaries or not entering Melee at all at both events. And the result for both was the same – almost everything is still there, but it’s clear that if I need to be preparing further in advance for when I really return to form, as I was upset in winners bracket of both tournaments (by FatGoku at Genesis, and by Reesch at Full Bloom). A bit of concentrated solo practice to get my movement back up to speed, and some netplay sessions with good people to get my brain back up to speed. I’ll save some time and say that it was the same story for both Melee tournaments I’ve entered so far – I basically only played Melee a few times in the week leading up to the event. So far, I’ve decided to give competing in both Melee and Ultimate at the same time an honest shot, but I haven’t been competing in Melee in earnest in the way I was last year. In this bl0g post I’ll reflect on my experiences this year so far and hopefully by the end of it I’ll have a better idea of where I’m at with smash. I also don’t really have an answer to this question. It’s improvement, competing, friends, writing, streaming, podcasting, traveling, and much more. It’s a pretty wide question because smash isn’t just one thing. But trying to improve at the game with everything else on my plate is proving to be an extremely difficult task, and keeps pushing me to ask of myself: what do I really want to get out of smash? The game is a lot of fun and I’m pretty optimistic about its merit as a competitive game. Ultimate has been out for a few months now and has taken up the majority of the time I can dedicate to smash. ![]()
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